Caution, shawarma: experts told which catering outlets should be avoided

Fast food vendors not only need to be inspected, but also sniffed

In the north of Moscow, an emergency occurred related to street food: 32 customers of the bistro on the streets of Sofia Kovalevskaya were poisoned by shawarma, 28 of them were hospitalized. An inspection by Rospotrebnadzor found numerous violations of the regulations in the catering establishment – in particular, the absence of medical books, product labeling, and regular cleaning of the premises. What kind of check can an ordinary fast food customer carry out so as not to risk their health, MK found out.

Checks by official departments are a useful thing, but they are carried out according to established formal criteria (this is their plus and minus from the point of view of an ordinary consumer). It is quite possible to imagine an institution with delicious and completely harmless food, which at the same time falls short of the requirements of Russian SanPiNs (for example, a teahouse in a bazaar in Tashkent or Damascus). And vice versa: the “point” that scrupulously fulfills all the norms is not one hundred percent insured against a fatal failure …

“An ordinary consumer has always checked catering establishments organoleptically, in other words, according to his own feelings,” says Leonid Naumov, a toxicologist with 40 years of experience. – The sense organs are given to a person exactly for this – to distinguish which things are edible, and which ones are better not to be taken into the mouth. I will note by the way that in recent years I have had an increase in patients who have lost their sense of smell and taste as a result of the coronavirus. They simply could not recognize the spoiled products and got poisoned.

Approaching the “point” of street food, you need to pay attention to smells, the source of “MK” emphasized. It should not smell not only of expired meat, but also of “overcooked” cooking oil: they often try to save money on it by preparing pies and other fast food. If there are strong perfume or chemical odors, such as vinegar, this should also alert: perhaps they are trying to drown out not too fresh products. Not too good if there is a “canteen smell”, with a hint of weathered food and wet rags.

– Then turn on your eyes. You should like both the display case and the food on it, not cause any complaints, the doctor advises. – For example, if we talk about tandoor pastries, a bad sign is coating with egg and sesame seeds: “brilliant” pastries, most likely, were cooked many hours ago and brought from another bakery, and they usually bake on the spot without such coating.

The figure of the seller himself: a person must be neatly dressed (without areas of the naked body “in the public domain”), cut his hair, wear gloves, Naumov recalled. An important point: if the same person works with the cash register and food, he must take off his gloves when working with the cash register, and put on fresh gloves when going to the kitchen.

“But since it is very difficult to do this correctly, most often people, especially men, ignore this rule,” says the interlocutor of MK. – Therefore, I personally do not eat where there is no separate cashier working with money. A cook is exactly a cook, his work is “sterile”.

The reason for refusing food and even complaints may be a violation of the rules for wearing gloves: for example, a cook comes from the street or from the toilet in already wearing hand protection. You should always pay attention to this, the expert says. Most cases of food poisoning and, say, cases of rotavirus are associated precisely with the dirty hands of those who prepared food.

By the way, one should not forget about the cleanliness of the eater’s hands either: at least with the help of alcohol wipes, it is necessary to bring the hands into proper condition, otherwise you can get poisoned even in a sterile institution.

“Medical books and other certificates can be seen on the walls, they are almost everywhere,” says Yegor Nenashev, author of car tours in Russia. – But if we talk about the choice of roadside cafes, then there are two criteria: one is offline, the other is online. First: if you see a point where a queue of parked trucks is a hundred meters away, feel free to come in, they won’t feed you anything. Truckers know and pass each other the addresses of the correct cafes. Second – look at the reviews on the maps. If there are dozens of “minuses” – then we are passing by.